When a Man Defines Himself By Tools He Uses

THIS Christmas, Elaine Greene, a magazine editor in New York, is giving her husband, Larry Weisburg, a hard-to-wrap gift he has wanted for a long time: a table saw. "If I say I'm going to give him a sweater for a present, he will say: 'Don't give me a sweater. I already have a sweater,' " Ms. Greene said. "He says, 'What I'd really like to have is a good broadax.' "

Man is a "tool-using animal," Thomas Carlyle wrote. "Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all."

This was Henry David Thoreau's perspective: "Men have become the tools of their tools."

James O'Neil, a psychology professor at the School of Family Studies at the University of Connecticut, sees it another way: "I think men look for activities where they can have some control over an outcome, whether it be growing something or building something."

Juan Llull, a manager of Vercesi Hardware in New York, meets these men every day. "Guys come in here and get lost for hours looking at tools," he said. "You see the guys with suits come in at lunchtime and not take lunch."

Although some women share the male fascination with power and hand tools, Judy Riggs, the executive director of the Home Improvement Research Institute in Lincolnshire, Ill., said, "Our national research shows that by a wide margin, men are the predominant users."

For these believers, tools are more than the basic accouterments of routine home repairs. For example, a man who looked like a lawyer or stockbroker walked into Tarzian Hardware in Brooklyn last summer and bought a state-of-the-art electronic micrometer, brushed-chrome calipers and a black circular level, said Willy Tarzian, the manager and an owner. "These are all designer, expensive items," Mr. Tarzian recalled, "and the guy said, 'These are so cool.' He said he was going to display them in his toolroom."

Yet understanding the relationship of men to their planes and saws and awls is difficult. Some tools are described with near reverence, as trusted companions. Their owners say they ease the way to creativity, freeing the mind and soothing the soul.

"Certain tools accumulate sentimental attachment the older they are," said Richard Boothby, an assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola College in Baltimore who is also a sculptor and carpenter.

"I have tools that belonged to my grandfather," he said. "One of them is a very old saw. The blade is actually black and pitted with age but has been so often oiled and rubbed with steel wool, it has a special patina, and it's beautiful. I often find myself picking this saw out of the toolbox because I feel more comfortable with it. There are stains from body oil and sweat in the handle grip."

"For someone like me, an academic who spends much of his life with paper and computer screens, you become starved for some of the sensual, tangible stuff," he said. "Tools have colors and odors and patina and heft."

John Murray, a Brooklyn artist who earns a living making architectural models, finds that using tools in woodworking offers a freedom lacking in his regular work.

"I can vent frustration by pounding a hammer," Mr. Murray said. "But my favorite tool is a table saw. When it starts up, it has a nasty hum to it. It's not real loud. It has a blade that whistles or screams as you send a piece of wood through it. When I do that, I'm in my own little world, I guess."

John Hope Franklin, a history professor at Duke University and an orchid grower, worries less about the heft or feel of tools than he does about their cleanliness. His greenhouse in Durham, N.C., holds nearly 1,000 orchids from around the world, and one contaminated tool might undo months of painstaking work in the greenhouse.

"The tools must be absolutely sterile because I cannot risk communicating a disease from one plant to another," he said. "For sterilization, I use a propane torch."

Don't ask Edward J. Reilly, a partner in the New York law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, to be philosophical about tools or his avocation of making furniture from fine woods. But he does admit that his avocation often helps free him to think about difficult issues at work.

"If you want to ask questions about legal issues of the day, I could talk intelligently," said Mr. Reilly, who represented the six children of the late J. Seward Johnson, an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, in the battle for his estate in 1986.

"Woodworking is a mildly intellectual pursuit," he said. "You can't just say, 'I'm going to take a board a make a box out of it.' You want to do something interesting and well done."

For Mort Richter, who owns an investment company and makes 18th-century-style furniture in his workshop in Greenwich, Conn., the motivation is similar. "I do it because one day you are standing there looking at a piece of walnut, and a day or month later it has somehow become something really gorgeous," he said. "If it's made out of hardwood, it's like dealing with a gem."

He added, "I'm not making contact with somebody else, but me, and in the abstract, that's all the company I need."

Dr. O'Neil, the psychologist, said: "A lot of self-dialogue occurs under those circumstances. Some of the insights men get in their middle 30's and early 40's, a time when they are inclined to re-evaluate their priorities, come when they get involved in activities where there are no pressures for success."

Pursuing woodworking as a way to experience a feeling of control is one sentiment men often express. Years ago, when Ed Hoppe wrote scripts for Mike Wallace at CBS Radio, he said he often got the feeling that after the scripts were read over the air, his work vanished with the sound of Mr. Wallace's voice.

"I wanted something I could nail down that was my own that would last more than a day," said Mr. Hoppe, who makes wood sculptures and collages inspired by Louise Nevelson in his Old Greenwich, Conn., workshop.

"Working with wood was a way to have total control over something," he said. "Writing for Mike Wallace, I didn't have total control." He added, with some pride, "In my workshop, nobody else can tell me what to do or how to do it."

Stanley Teitelbaum, a supervising psychoanalyst at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in New York, said some men use tools to alleviate stress, and society reinforces the use of tools as a benchmark of masculinity and competence.

"In my therapy sessions with some men," he said, "they have mentioned or expressed the sense of comfort or peacefulness that they derive in working with their tools, especially as a counterpoint to dealing with the frustrations and stresses in work and personal lives."

Dr. Boothby, the philosophy professor, said the satisfaction he gets from working with tools and natural materials is just such an antidote.

"In the broadest context, it's the problem of modernity," he said. "The whole pattern of work today is away from physical bodily involvement. Even those left in jobs requiring physical contact don't have the sense of control or participation in the whole process by which something is made."

"When you work with tools and raw materials," he said, "there is the sense that the whole thing is wrought by your powers and skills."

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A version of this article appears in print on December 20, 1990, on Page C00001 of the National edition with the headline: When a Man Defines Himself By Tools He Uses. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe